Why Your Feelings Matter More Than You Think
Many Christians were taught that emotions are unreliable or even dangerous. But what if ignoring your feelings is keeping you stuck? Tim Long and Christine Sneeringer explore why feelings matter — and what to do with them.
Many of us grew up hearing — directly or indirectly — that emotions are dangerous. That feelings are unreliable. That the spiritually mature person is the one who has learned to rise above them.
But what if that message has been quietly working against you?
In this conversation, I sit down with my friend Christine Sneeringer — Executive Director of Worthy Creations Ministry and a counselor who has spent decades helping people find healing at the intersection of faith, sexuality, and emotional life — to wrestle honestly with a question that cuts to the heart of both faith and healing: Why are feelings important — and what do we actually do with them?
I share from my own story — years of spiritual discipline and outward success, while remaining largely disconnected from my inner life, and how that disconnection fed cycles of shame I couldn’t seem to break. Christine opens up about learning early to suppress sadness, reaching instead for anger or food. Together we trace a pattern that shows up again and again in the lives of people who are trying hard to walk faithfully: emotional suppression doesn’t produce freedom. It produces shame cycles, compulsive behaviors, and a nagging sense that something is still wrong underneath.
We cover a lot of ground — why childhood shapes our relationship with emotions before we have any say in it, what men and women tend to seek emotionally and how differently they go looking for it, why sadness in particular is not a weakness but a doorway to connection, and what Jesus actually modeled and taught about the inner life — including a fresh look at the Beatitudes.
The core idea is one that sits at the center of how I approach therapy at Kainos: feeling and dealing. Feelings were never meant to be ignored or overcome. They were meant to be known, named, and brought into the light — where real healing becomes possible.
If you’ve ever been told that your emotions are the problem, this one is for you.
